On Tuesday, things seemed promising that a fix could finally be in the works. Council spent five hours listening to testimony about the center's problems. But the next day, it was back to the mud-slinging between Cranley and Black. Not one elected official has since talked publicly about fixing the 911 center outside of the context of firing Black. It makes us question whether we can really trust City Hall to fix a critical public safety problem.

2. Cincinnati really needs to decide on one true form of government.

This whole fight might have never happened if the city had one true form of government. Instead, City Hall straddles the line between a strong mayor and city manager system. It would take a ballot initiative to change the Charter and fix this.

It's unfortunate the Charter purists pushed back on Jeff Berding, Pat DeWine, Johnathan Holifield, Chip Gerhardt and others who championed a strong mayor ballot initiative 20 years ago. Voters ended up passing a watered-down version of a strong mayor system.

The compromise essentially gave the city co-CEOs. What effective and efficient company has co-top leaders? Here, the mayor is supposed to stay out of hiring top administrators and making multi-million-dollar development deals. But no company CEO would be hands-off on such major decisions.

The Cranley-Black feud seemed inevitable under the system, especially when the mayor and city manager are both power-hungry alpha males.

3. Holding public meetings via text message is illegal.

Council's Progressive 5 majority planned part of their coup to keep Black on the job longer in a secret text-message string in mid-March. Well, P.G. Sittenfeld, Wendell Young, Chris Seelbach, Tamaya Dennard and Greg Landsman thought it was secret. Oops. The group text constituted a public meeting, and those messages are public records.

The Ohio Supreme Court's news website couldn't be more clear in its summary of the law: "A private, prearranged discussion of public business by the majority of a public body’s members either face-to-face or by other means such as telephone, e-mail, text or tweet violates the Ohio Open Meetings Act."

This takes us back to point No. 1: Secret meetings undermine the public's trust.

4. Elections have consequences.

This isn't a new lesson, but a simple reminder. The people spoke on Nov. 7 and said they wanted Cranley to remain mayor. Voters might have held their nose as they filled in the box next to his name, but that doesn't matter in the end. The city is stuck with Cranley for 3½ more years, like it or not. There's no recall provision in the city's Charter.

The outrage about wanting Cranley to resign or be recalled is kind of laughable. The time for the energized anti-Cranley movement was six months ago. It's not like Cranley has changed. He's still the same uber-political, hot-tempered, developer-friendly, Charter-challenging guy now as he was during his first term. It all made him ripe for being voted out, but Yvette Simpson lost her momentum after she opposed the Children's Hospital expansion project in August.

We're not saying don't hold Cranley accountable. Council needs to look into the unethical pay-to-play allegations brought forth by Black. If major problems are uncovered, then put the heat on Cranley to leave. Otherwise, time to move on from the election.